Patricia Cornwell - Book of the Dead

Ed looks toward his office, shakes his head, and says, “Terrible, terrible. She was a nice girl, a real nice girl. Saw her just here right before she got killed, tipped me twenty dollars every time she came through the door. Terrible. Such a nice girl. Acted like a normal person, you know.”

“She was staying here?” Scarpetta says. “I thought she always stayed at the Charleston Place Hotel. At least that’s what’s been in the news whenever she’s in this area.”

“Her tennis coach has an apartment here, hardly ever in it, but he’s got one,” Ed says.

Scarpetta wonders why she’s never heard about that. Now isn’t the time to ask. She’s worried about Rose. Ed pushes the elevator button and taps the button for Rose’s floor.

The doors shut. Marino’s dark glasses stare straight ahead.

“I think I got a migraine,” he says. “You got anything for a migraine?”

“You’ve already taken eight hundred milligrams of ibuprofen. Nothing else for at least five hours.”

“That don’t help a migraine. I wish you hadn’t had that stuff in the house. It’s like someone slipped me something, like I was drugged.”

“The only person who slipped you something is yourself.”

“I can’t believe you called Bull. What if he’s dangerous?”

She can’t believe he’d say such a thing after what happened last night.

“I sure as hell hope you don’t ask him to help in the office next,” he says. “What the hell does he know? He’ll just get in the way.”

“I can’t think about this right now. I’m thinking about Rose right now. And maybe this would be a good time for you to worry about somebody besides yourself.” Anger begins to rise, and Scarpetta walks quickly along a hallway of old white plaster walls and worn blue carpet.

She rings the bell to Rose’s apartment. No answer, no sound inside except the TV. She sets the box on the floor and tries the bell again. Then again. She calls her cell phone, her landline. She hears them ringing inside, then voicemail.

“Rose!” Scarpetta pounds on the door. “Rose!”

She hears the TV. Nothing but the TV.

“We’ve got to get a key,” she says to Marino. “Ed has one. Rose!”

“Fuck that.” Marino kicks the door as hard as he can, and wood splinters and the burglar chain breaks, brass links clinking to the floor as the door flies open and bangs against the wall.

Inside, Rose is on the couch, motionless, her eyes shut, her face ashen, strands of long, snowy hair unpinned.

“Call nine-one-one now!” Scarpetta puts pillows behind Rose to prop her up as Marino calls for an ambulance.

She takes Rose’s pulse. Sixty-one.

“They’re on their way,” Marino says.

“Go to the car. My medical bag’s in the trunk.”

He runs out of the apartment, and she notices a wineglass and a prescription bottle on the floor, almost hidden by the skirt of the couch. She’s stunned to see that Rose has been taking Roxicodone, a trade name for oxycodone hydrochloride, an opioid analgesic that’s notoriously habit-forming. The prescription of one hundred tablets was filled ten days ago. She takes the top off the bottle and counts the fifteen-milligram green tablets. There are seventeen left.

“Rose!” Scarpetta shakes her. She’s warm and sweating. “Rose, wake up! Can you hear me! Rose!”

Scarpetta goes to the bathroom and returns with a cool washcloth, places it on Rose’s forehead, and holds her hand, talking to her, trying to rouse her. Then Marino is back. He looks frantic and frightened as he hands Scarpetta the medical bag.

“She moved the couch. I was supposed to do it,” he says, his dark glasses staring at the couch.

Rose stirs as a siren sounds in the distance. Scarpetta takes a blood pressure cuff and a stethoscope from her medical bag.

“I promised to come over and move it,” Marino says. “She moved it by herself. It was over there.” His dark glasses look at an empty space near a window.

Scarpetta pushes up Rose’s sleeve, slides the stethoscope on her arm, wraps the cuff just above the bend in the arm, tight enough to stop blood flow.

The siren is very loud.

She squeezes the bulb, inflates the cuff, then opens the valve to release the air slowly as she listens to the blood beating its way along the artery. Air hisses quietly as the cuff deflates.

The siren stops. The ambulance is here.

Systolic pressure eighty-six. Diastolic pressure fifty-eight. She moves the diaphragm over Rose’s chest and back. Respiration is depressed, and she’s hypotensive.

Rose stirs, moves her head.

“Rose?” Scarpetta says loudly. “Can you hear me?”

Her eye lids flutter open.

“I’m going to take your temperature.” She places a digital thermometer under Rose’s tongue and in seconds it beeps. Temperature ninety-nine-point-one. She holds up the bottle of pills. “How many did you take?” she asks. “How much wine did you drink?”

“It’s just the flu.”

“You move the couch yourself?” Marino asks her, as if it matters.

She nods. “Overdid it. That’s all.”

Rapid footsteps and the clatter of paramedics and a stretcher in the hallway.

“No,” she protests. “Send them away.”

Two EMTs in blue jumpsuits fill the doorway and push the stretcher inside. On top of it is a defibrillator and other equipment.

Rose shakes her head. “No. I’m all right. I’m not going to the hospital.”

Ed appears in the doorway, worried, looking in.

“What’s the problem, ma’am?” One of the EMTs, blond with pale blue eyes, comes over to the couch and looks closely at Rose. He looks closely at Scarpetta.

“No.” Rose is adamant, waving them off. “I mean it! Please go away. I fainted. That’s all.”

“That’s not all,” Marino says to her, but his dark glasses are staring at the blond EMT. “I had to bust the damn door down.”

“And you better fix it before you leave,” Rose mutters.

Scarpetta introduces herself. She explains that it seems Rose mixed alcohol with oxycodone, was unconscious when they got here.

“Ma’am?” The blond EMT leans closer to Rose. “How much alcohol and oxycodone did you have, and when did you take it?”

“One more than usual. Three tablets. And just a little bit of wine. Half a glass.”

“Ma’am, it’s very important you’re honest with me about this.”

Scarpetta hands him the prescription bottle and says to Rose, “One tablet every four to six hours. You took two more than that. And you’re on a high dose already. I want you to go to the hospital just to make sure everything’s all right.”

“No.”

“Did you crush them or chew them or swallow them whole?” Scarpetta asks, because when the tablets are crushed, they dissolve more quickly and the oxycodone is more rapidly released and absorbed.

“I swallowed them whole, just like I always do. My knees were aching something awful.” She looks at Marino. “I shouldn’t have moved the couch.”

“If you won’t go with these nice EMTs, I’ll take you,” Scarpetta says, aware of the blond EMT’s stare.

“No.” Rose adamantly shakes her head.

Marino watches the blond EMT watch Scarpetta. Marino doesn’t protectively move close to her as he would have done in the past. She doesn’t address the most disturbing question — why Rose is on Roxicodone.

“I’m not going to the hospital,” Rose says. “I’m not. I mean it.”

“It looks like we’re not going to need you,” Scarpetta says to the EMTs. “But thanks.”

“I heard you lecture a few months back,” the blond EMT says to her. “The child fatality session at the National Forensic Academy. You lectured.”

His name tag reads T. Turkington. She has no recollection of him.